Woman who called police on Black birdwatcher said she doesn’t think she ‘had another option’

The woman who called New York City police over a Black birdwatcher in Central Park said that she doesn’t think she had “another option” besides seeking authorities, NBC News reported.

In a Tuesday episode of the podcast “Honestly with Bari Weiss,” Amy Cooper told host Kmele Foster that she had “no choice” but to call 911 on birdwatcher Christian Cooper, stating he was trying to offer her dog a treat after he told her to put her dog on a leash. 

“He’s holding these dog treats in one hand and a bike helmet in his other hand and I’m thinking, ‘Oh my god, is this guy going to lure my dog over and try to hit him with his bike helmet?’” Cooper told Foster.  “And if I end up over there, am I going to get hit by this bike helmet?”

Cooper later said that since she was a woman alone in the park, she had no choice but to call authorities on Cooper. 

“I don’t know that as a woman alone in a park that I had another option,” she said. 

A viral video in May 2020 shows Cooper having a confrontation with Christian Cooper, who is Black, over not having her dog on a leash in the park. This led to her calling authorities claiming that she was being threatened by him. The two individuals are not related, according to NBC News. 

The confrontation happened during the wave of efforts to voice racial injustice in the United States. 

Cooper, who was meme’d on the internet as a “Karen,” filed a lawsuit against her former employer Franklin Templeton in May stating that they unfairly fired her over the incident, NBC News reported. 

The company told The Hill in May that Cooper’s claims were “baseless.”